The few words that Roald Dahl wrote back to me on a postcard from Norway are implanted in my brain and I can recite them without taking a breath: "My dear Danny -- Your splendid letter has followed me here.
I used to study the Rand McNally globe in my bedroom and imagine the journey my splendid letter took as it traveled from Dahl's estate in England all the way to his vacation resort in Spitsbergen, Norway.
David Joss Buckley London Larry Westland's splendid headline (Letters, 21 December) reminded me of how we used to sing the penultimate line of the last verse of Charlotte Elliott's well-known hymn Just as I am, when Manchester City were in what was then the ecclesiastic-sounding Canon second division in 1984-5: "Here for a season, then above".
Their friendship (immortalized in a splendid volume of letters that has clearly served as one of Ms. von Trotta's sources) is a fascinating study in cultural and temperamental contrast, an impulsive and witty American paired with a steady, phlegmatic German.
However, their next effort, the criminally underrated and underselling New Adventures in Hi-Fi, was a low-key return to form, featuring the splendid "E-Bow The Letter": "I wore it like a badge of teenage film stars/ Hash bars, cherry mash and tinfoil tiaras/ Dreaming of Maria Callas/ Whoever she is".
No entry Two kinds of heroism Not amused Digging for truth Correction The way we fly now Love, Bertie Hothouse flowers ReprintsAnybody who reads this splendid and revealing selection of letters will soon feel that he knows Russell though not, of course, as well as its editor, Nicholas Griffin, does.
"Even in the rain and mist, the arrival at Guernsey is splendid," he wrote in a letter to his wife.
(Wolfe letter to Roger: "Your splendid dinner Friday really did RESTORE my soul").
The title story addresses the growing anxieties of Russian émigrés in Paris, where she made her home ("The letter contained the following news: Everything's splendid here.
The Cartesian claim that animals were more splendid versions of artificial automata, "which move without thought" (Letter to More, February 1649; Descartes 1991, 366), for example, was seen by More as providing hostages to atheists.
